


I'm Gonna Stick Like Glue (Because I'm Stuck On You)

by onceuponatime



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Ashton likes torturing Cal, Calum works in a pharmacy, Fluff, M/M, Michael gets sick a lot, Oblivious boys being oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:01:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponatime/pseuds/onceuponatime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The main reason Calum tolerates his job is because of Michael. Michael – the pale, asthmatic, hay fever and bronchitis suffering, regular migraine bearer with no immune system who comes in at least six days a week with a perpetually running nose and bloodshot eyes. Even in warm weather he’s bundled in layers, a beanie perched on his head with whatever colour his hair is that week peeking out from underneath.<br/>Calum might have a tiny little crush on him. Well, maybe it’s not so tiny. It’s actually quite massive and he’s sure Michael Clifford is unintentionally and unknowingly ruining his life."</p><p>or Calum works in a pharmacy and Michael comes in quite a lot</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Gonna Stick Like Glue (Because I'm Stuck On You)

**Author's Note:**

> Ayo so here's some Malum. I've never written Malum before and I don't know why because I love those two so much and they're so cute that I want to bash my head against things but whatever. Anyway this sucks and it's 4am so it's unedited as heck but idk, I hope you enjoy it anyway.  
> Title is from Stuck On You by Elvis Presley, the other love of my life

Calum doesn’t hate his job. He doesn’t necessarily love it, but he figures he could be doing something worse with his time than dressing in a fancy lab coat that makes him feel like some kind of scientist and putting different combinations of medications into bags, handing them over the counter and then going back to fucking around on his phone. More often than not, Ashton is the other pharmacist working with Calum, and the two of them get on great – trying to diagnose people who come in looking for the more uncommon and strange meds, and trying to protect Calum from the clutches of sixty five year old Margaret Pritchett, who wears jewels bigger than Calum’s head around her neck and on her fingers, dyed fur and expensive clothes on her body. Ashton jokes that Calum should go for it – she’s filthy rich, and obviously interested. Every time Ashton says this, Calum delivers a swift kick to his shin and turns, smiling, to serve the next customer.

The main reason Calum tolerates his job is because of Michael. Michael – the pale, asthmatic, hay fever and bronchitis suffering, regular migraine bearer with no immune system who comes in at least six days a week with a perpetually running nose and bloodshot eyes. Even in warm weather he’s bundled in layers, a beanie perched on his head with whatever colour his hair is that week peeking out from underneath.

Calum might have a tiny little crush on him. Well, maybe it’s not so tiny. It’s actually quite massive and he’s sure Michael Clifford is unintentionally and unknowingly ruining his life.

*~*

Calum is in the middle of filling Ms Pritchett’s blister pack, putting the correct tablets in the correct columns for each day (he knows that she’s able to do this herself, but she spends as much time as she can around at his counter, asking about painkillers and the gum that’s on display to the side), trying to keep the conversation between them minimal and polite which is a lot harder to do that he would have originally thought. She’s flipping her platinum blonde hair and flashing her new diamond ring around. Calum has asked Ashton a million times to take over as her pharmacist, but he declines, argues that watching Calum go all pink and try to defer all her flirting is too funny. “Just tell her you like dick,” is Ashton’s advice, nine of the ten times that Calum _doesn’t ask for it_. But it’s whatever, because his shift ends in forty five minutes, and he has frozen pizza and A Nightmare On Elm Street waiting for him at home.

Calum smiles when he hands over Margaret’s medication, holding the fake grin when her fingers brush against his and she says “Oh, Calum darling, thanks for sorting those out for me. With my eyesight, reading the labels is such a _bother_.” While he’s stamping her prescription card, he hears the familiar sniffling coming from one of the aisles in front of his counter. He knows exactly who it is, and he smiles genuinely this time as he slides Margaret her bag and bids her a good evening.

Sure enough, he spots the grey beanie coming towards him, lilac hair poking out, looking way too soft and fluffy and Calum can’t deal. Margaret is taking a long time putting her purse in her handbag and gathering her stuff, and Calum is on the verge of just shoving her away because he’s literally that impatient and needs to speak to Michael like, an hour ago. Even when Michael pulls out a tissue and wipes at his red nose he’s adorable, and Calum rests his elbows on the countertop, just watches as Michael looks through the bubble baths, waiting on the counter to be free.

After Margaret takes her sweet time with leaving, Michael walks up to the counter. His eyes are watery and his nose is a shiny red, so Calum knows how bad his hay fever is right about now. He just wants to take Michael home, tuck him into bed and put on a Disney movie, force him to drink tea and brush his hair off his forehead while holding him as he falls asleep. Fight off all the pollen and dust like some kind of summer ninja. He’s thought about this way too much.

“Back again?” he asks with a smirk when Michael is close enough. He’s already reaching under the counter for one of the little paper bags.

Michael nods. “Ran out of hay fever meds.” His voice is weird, like he’s talking while hanging his head upside down and Calum wants to coo. But doesn’t. Because he is a Mature Adult with a job that doesn’t allow you to act all mothery over your customers.

“Seriously?” He says instead, turning to the rows of shelves behind him. “I filled those up for you like, a week ago?” He starts picking pill bottles off the shelf, almost knowing Michael’s prescription by heart now.

He almost drops a bottle when he hears Michael say “Well, maybe I just couldn’t stay away from you,” with a small laugh. He’s glad Michael can’t see his face, because he knows the colour and the level of heat radiating from it are proportionate, and right now, he feels like he could legitimately cook food on his skin. So he busies himself for a few seconds, lingering longer than necessary and waits for his face to cool down before turning back to Michael, who’s busy thumbing through one of the pamphlets that are scattered over the counter.

He dumps the bag in front of Michael, stamps the little green prescription book and puts it in the bag along with Michael’s medicine. “There you go,” he says, pushing the bag towards the edge of the counter. “There’s enough medication in there to dose an elephant with hay fever so it should get you through this tough time. I hope the flowers go easy on you.”

“They never go easy on me,” Michael says grumpily, and Calum laughs, leaning over the counter again and watching Michael back away slowly. “See ya around, Calum!” Michael shouts over his shoulder, and Calum has to bite his bottom lip to stop himself from smiling too much.

“Just ask him out already. Christ,” Ashton says from where he’s standing behind Calum, buttoning up his lab coat and adjusting his name tag.

*~*

It’s half five on a Tuesday, late October. There’s not any sun, but Michael is heading towards him with big sunglasses covering his eyes and the hood from his sweatshirt pulled over his head. He looks paler than usual and Calum wants nothing more than to pull him into a hug. “Migraine?” he asks, voice soft and full of sympathy. Michael looks like he’s about to keel over.

Michael nods slightly, hissing at the movement. He hands Calum his little green book and presses his fingertips against his temples, rubbing small circles, and even with the sunglasses Calum can see his eyes squeezing shut. He gets the meds as quick as he can so that Michael can get out of the florescent lights and get back to his bed.  

Calum pops an ice pack and the Dairy Milk chocolate bar he was saving for his own lunch into the bag as well as Michael’s painkillers, just because, and seals it shut with the little sticker label he prints out before handing it over. Michael grunts his thanks and Calum has to hold on to the edge of the counter to keep himself from walking Michael home and making sure he doesn’t like, pass out on the sidewalk. He shouldn’t even have ventured outside, Calum thinks as he arranges the pregnancy tests into a neater pile. He reads the back of one and considers getting it, just to try it out for the laugh, but then sees Ashton giving him _a look_ so he puts it back on the shelf and starts on the insulin pens.

*~*

Michael looks like death warmed over and shoved into a leather jacket. When he makes it to Calum’s counter, there are still flakes of snow decorating his bright red fringe and the shoulders of his jacket, and Calum wants nothing more than to reach over and brush the snow out of Michael’s hair. Maybe kiss him a little too.

“What is it this time?” Calum asks with a frown. “Asthma? Bronchitis? Flu?” He knows he probably shouldn’t recite off every medical condition  Michael has if he doesn’t want to look like a total creeper, but he’s been dealing with the dude’s medication for a year and a half now, so he can kind of spot the symptoms and guess what Michael needs before he even asks for it. Okay, so he’s a total creeper. Whatever.

“Actually,” Michael says, crossing his arms on the top of the counter and resting his chin on them. “What would you recommend for a hangover with a vengeance?”

Calum chuckles and pats at Michael’s shoulder. “Plain old Aspirin should help you with that,” he answers, reaching to the shelf closest to him and grabbing the small white bottle. The less serious medication is stacked close enough to him that he doesn’t even have to move his hand from Michael’s elbow. “Good night last night?”

“Started out that way,” Michael muses, head lolling to the side and resting on his crossed arm. “Went to see AC/DC with my roommate but he abandoned me in the bar afterwards to go home with some girl, and by then I’d spent all my money on an overly expensive concert shirt and alcohol, so I didn’t have enough money to call a cab. So I had to call my friend Luke, who was in such a shitty mood cause I woke him at four am and I got an earful on the drive home. I think that’s what gave me a headache more than the alcohol.”

Calum takes two aspirins out of the bottle and gives them to Michael before reaching under the counter to grab one of the small bottles of water that are stashed there for occasions such as these. He hands that over to Michael as well, and laughs when the red head swallows the pills quickly, thanking Calum like he just jumped in front of a bullet for him. “You like AC/DC?” Calum asks, and then wants to slap himself because _duh_ , of course he likes them if he went to see them in concert.

Michael just smiles, his head resting back on his crossed arms. If it was anyone else they’d probably be sent on their way after getting what they came for, but Michael’s eyes are so green and his lips are so red and he’s some kind of beautiful that makes Calum’s hands clammy and his heart race, so there’s an exception for him. “I fucking love ‘em!” Michael says, sounding as enthusiastic as he can with his head pounding and his voice muffled by the material of his sweater.

“Me too.” Calum agrees. “I wanted to go see them so bad, but none of my friends would go with me and I didn’t wanna go by myself.”

“Dude,” Michael whines almost mournfully. “If we had’ve had this conversation a month ago, you could have come with me!”

Calum tries to act as cool as he can with the butterflies in his stomach going nuts and Ashton smirking at him from the other end of the counter.

*~*

It’s been about two weeks since he last saw Michael and he’s starting to get really pissy about it. Like, okay, maybe he should be glad that Michael’s health is fine enough for him to go without medication for so long, but Calum’s days go a lot slower now that Michael doesn’t come in blabbering about some band or game or other. Since the discovery of the mutual love for AC/DC, Michael always gets Calum to talk about music or television shows or whatever else, and when Michael leaves, Calum’s heart is racing and his cheeks are rosy. It’s so worth all the teasing from Ashton.

But on the other hand, he’s worried something happened to Michael and he’s lying dead on his sofa because his bronchitis meds didn’t work and no one knows he’s there, and God, Calum hates himself a little bit when these thoughts enter his head.

He considers getting Michael’s phone number from the system and calling him, make sure everything is fine and he’ll at least know that Michael is alive. He knows he’s being melodramatic, but he hasn’t seen his crush in so long so he thinks he deserves it.

The worst is Ashton. Ashton knows exactly what is making Calum so pissy, and every night, when they shut off the lights of their little corner and head out the main doors, Ashton will put his hand over his heart and cry out “Romeo! Romeo! Where for art thou Romeo?” Calum just shoves his hands into his pockets and grits his teeth so he doesn’t do something stupid like trip Ashton up or shove him down a manhole.

By the middle of the third week, Calum is done with Ashton’s shit. He’s filing paperwork because some woman named Katie transferred her prescription to their pharmacy, and so Calum is double checking they get all the medication she needs when Ashton shouts “Hey, Cal! Your favourite customer is coming up aisle five!”

Calum practically sprints to the counter, lab coat flapping wildly behind him. His eyes are too busy scanning for red hair that he misses Ms Pritchett the first time, and when he finally spots her he can’t keep the disappointment off his face. She doesn’t seem to mind though, smiling brightly as she hands over her book and touches the back of Calum’s hand lightly. Calum knocks over the boxes of Rennies that Ashton was in the middle of stacking, and only flips him off when he shouts “Hey!”

*~*

It’s not Michael that comes in to get his next prescription, but a tall blond man with insanely bright blue eyes and a lip ring. Calum can actually hear Ashton’s breath catch in his throat when the stranger approaches them, and then when he asks for Michael Clifford’s prescription, holding out Michael’s little green book, Calum and Ashton’s hearts shatter in unison. Ashton, who was previously twirling one of his curls around his finger, now has his head resting on his hand as he stares at the stranger with a mixture of pain and lust.

Calum just busies himself with sorting out the tablets, piling them into the paper bag and waiting on the sticky label to print. He feels stupid, because he should have known that Michael would have a boyfriend. He’s too funny and sweet and beautiful to be single and Calum kind of wants to take a handful of the sleeping pills he knows are around somewhere and knock himself out for a few hours. He wonders if it would hurt less if Michael’s boyfriend _didn’t_ look like he just walked out of some punk modelling agency.

Ashton fares no better from the whole ordeal, looking at the dude with sad puppy dog eyes. When Calum passes the bag to the stranger, he smiles. But his smile disappears when he sees the blond pick up two boxes of condoms from the aisle in front and head to the main cashier. The sleeping pills are looking more inviting by the second.

“Good man, Michael,” Ashton grumbles. “Congratulations on scoring that actual deity.”

Calum just says something about wanting a smoke and sits in the break room for twenty minutes, chewing on a granola bar that tastes like cardboard and staring at the black screen of his phone.

*~*

Michael comes into the pharmacy a few days later. His skin is shiny and flushed, and Calum just knows he’s on the tail end of a bad flu. But at least he has his eight foot tall sex god to take care of him, Calum thinks bitterly. He blames his grouchiness on the lack of caffeine currently in his system because he is definitely not heartbroken and feeling like shit because he’s eaten nothing but ice cream and his insides hate him.

Michael is standing in front of him; smile plastered on his pale face and for the first time Calum wishes he wasn’t there. It was easier to deal with all this when he wasn’t reminded of how beautiful Michael actually is. And how unattainable he is. It’s his own fault, he guesses, because Michael has been coming to the pharmacy for a long time and they’ve flirted back and forth for most of it. He missed his chance.

“Hey,” Michael says with a little dorky wave that definitely does not make Calum melt a tiny bit. Calum mutters a ‘hey’ as he takes Michael’s book from him, going back to start collecting pills. The asthma dosage has gone down, Calum notices, and feels a little better knowing Michael’s getting a break from his breathing struggles.

When he goes back to the front, Michael and Ashton are in conversation, smile wide on Michael’s face. Calum doesn’t hear a word they say, focussing instead on the stubble that decorates Michael’s jaw and neck. He wants to feel it under his lips. Fuck

Michael turns back to him and takes his stuff with a bright “Thanks, Calum.”

Calum just nods, and he can see Michael’s face fall, crease between his eyebrows as he looks at Calum. He feels bad for letting his stupid crush get in the way of whatever friendship that they had going on, but all that’s going though his head is _Michael has a boyfriend_ and when he’s looking at Michael’s wide eyes and plump lips, he feels a little like crying.

“See you, Calum. Bye, Ashton,” Michael says, backing away, confusion still written over his face. Calum just drops his head against the hard surface of the counter with a loud _thump_ and Ashton rubs circles on his back.

*~*

When Michael walks up to the counter he’s jittery and nervous, gnawing at his bottom lip. He looks completely out of it, and Calum wonders if he’s getting sick again. He shoves aside the chewy vitamins and walks over to Michael, waiting on him to hand over the book so he can start getting his meds. Not that he doesn’t have it engrained in his brain by this point, but it’s the principle of the thing.

“You got your prescription book with you?” Calum asks when it becomes evident that Michael isn’t going to be the one to speak first.

“No, not today,” Michael answers, fiddling with the cuff of his sweater and Calum wishes he wasn’t so damn cute.

“Oh? Are you just looking for Aspirin or Para-“

“I’m not looking for medication,” Michael blurts out, his face turning an impressive shade of pink.

“Oh?” Calum asks, placing the painkillers he had picked up back on the stand. “What is it, then?”

“I uh,” Michael begins, and it honestly looks like he’s about to pass out. “I wanted a date. With you, that is.”

There’s a couple of seconds of silence, both of them staring at each other before Calum manages a “What?”

“A date,” Michael says. “Oh my God I read it all wrong, didn’t I? I’m so sorry, it’s just Luke said that if I never asked I’d never know, and I thought with the ice pack and chocolate there was a slight chance you might like me back. I’m sorry, I’ll just –“

“Michael wait,” Calum almost shouts, reaching over the counter and grabbing Michael’s wrist when it looks like he’s about to bolt. Michael stands looking at Calum’s hand gripping at him. “What about your boyfriend?”

“My boyfriend?” Michael asks, looking confused.

“The blond guy that came in for your stuff? Really tall?”

“What? No, ew! That’s just Luke. Oh God, no, he’s my best friend! I was just too sick to get out of bed so I made him get my stuff for me!” Calum literally feels as if some massive weight has been lifted off his shoulders, and he feels a little guilty about every bad thought he had about Luke because he was just looking out for Michael when Calum was too wimpy to ask him out himself. “You know,” Michael says with a small smile. “He’s actually been hounding on about a certain curly haired pharmacist, who currently looks like he’s about to combust.”

Calum turns his head to follow Michael’s line of vision, and sure enough, Ashton is poking out from behind the shelves, looking guilty because he was caught but also smug as fuck. Calum just shakes his head and turns back to Michael. “So about this date?”

“Uhm, I didn’t think you’d actually agree to go out with me, so asking you was as far as I planned.”

Calum laughs, rubbing his thumb over the soft skin of Michael’s wrist. “I finish at six. We can go for coffee?”

“Sounds perfect,” Michael says. “And actually, while I’m here, can I get cold meds? I can feel my nose starting to get all blocked.”

Calum rolls his eyes fondly and searches for a UniFlu.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, come talk to me on tumblr - t1mburton !! :)


End file.
